The present invention generally relates to hydroclone filter systems, methods and apparatus. The described devices may be used in a variety of water treatment, fluid filtering and particle separation applications.
A wide range of technologies are currently used to treat, purify and/or filter water. Many such technologies require a relatively large amount of physical space and/or require the use of consumable filters that add to operational costs. For example, many drinking water treatment applications utilize settling ponds in combination with a series of screens and filters of progressively decreasing pore size to remove suspended solid particles from water.
In other applications cyclonic separators or hydroclones have been used to separate suspended particles from water and other fluid mediums. Hydroclones operate by introducing water into a conically shaped chamber to create a vortex within the chamber. Generally, the influent water is introduced near the top of a conical chamber and an effluent stream is discharged near the bottom of the chamber. Centrifugal force tends to cause heavier particles to move towards the periphery of the vortex. As a result the water near the center of the vortex tends to be cleaner than water at the periphery of the vortex. Thus, relatively cleaner water can be drawn from a central region of the hydroclone. By way of example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,529,724; 5,407,584, 5,478,484, and 5,879,545 all describe various hydroclone designs.
Although hydroclones have been used to remove suspended particles from water in a variety of applications, existing hydroclones are generally not well suited for filtering applications that require the removal of relatively small sized particles from large volumes of water. Therefore, hydroclones are typically not used to pre-filter drinking water or in a wide variety of other applications due to limitations in their filtering ability.
Although existing water filtering systems and existing hydroclones work well for their intended uses, there are continuing efforts to provide improved and/or more cost effective purification and/or filtering devices that can meet the needs of various specific applications.